MacDailyNews Take: The general public will be interested in foldable smartphones the day the foldable iPhone is unveiled. They’re not interested in half-assed defective dreck excreted onto the rubes by South Korean dishwasher makers and similar ilk.

As with fingerprint and facial recognition, when Apple debuts a foldable iPhone, then foldable smartphones will have been done right. — MacDailyNews, January 17, 2019

Yes, if Apple decides to do a foldable iPhone, they will be the first to do it right. I agree that so far the models that have been shown by other companies are laughable in their execution.

But, I wonder if there is a market for such an item. Just because technology allows for something doesn’t mean it makes for a better product.

What would be the advantage of a foldable phone? Our phones already can accommodate screens that are plenty large.

In essence, you’d have a phone that could fold out into the size of a small tablet. But again, to what end? If I want a tablet sized display, I will take an iPad or iPad mini. But often when I use my iPhone, I want a screen that roughly fits in one hand. I don’t want a larger screen that folds out.

I guess the only value would be to basically eliminate the need for a separate tablet computer.

I know that there has always been the familiar refrain of “why would anybody want that” with new tech, only to be shown that done properly it does succeed…but again, that doesn’t mean that every tech makes it to market or deserves to do so. It will be interesting to see what happens with this concept.

What you say could be true. But not every new tech idea succeeds. For instance, there was the 3D TV set fad from a few years ago. Everyone thought it would be the next big thing but it fizzled.

So that’s the interesting part: for every new idea, is it more like the horseless carriage or the 3D TV?

It’s just like when people try to justify starting a new company, they always point to the big time examples: the Steve Jobs and Apple, Elon Musk and Tesla, Jeff Bezos and Amazon, etc…without mentioning that something like 9 out of 10 startup companies go under in the first year. So sure you have your superstar hits, but you also have a whole lot of failures. But such is life and evolution: you need many attempts to generate a relative few successes, but it is those successes that make all the difference in the world.

That would be because they are a stupid idea. The reason many of us bought iPhones in the first place was because A) they worked great with our Macs, something the vast majority of other players didn’t care about, and B) because we hated our flip phones. Amazing what Samsung, Google, Microsoft et. al. come up with when Apple isn’t there to copy, even this far into the 21st century.

If the only point of it is that it folds, then it is just a novelty. How many want a novelty that is thicker (probably) and is likely to break more easily? On the other hand, if it really does something useful…